Exciting news the same week of ancient Indus finds in Botad village in Sarashtra 50 miles from Lothal, including beads and the evidence of industry. And at the giant site of Rakigarhi in Hisar, 15 more skeletons were found in Mound 7. Last year was exciting for its find of 5 skeletons, all of which together should enable DNA and other analysis.

"The humped bull (Bos indicus) has a long and special association with India. Its association with Siva, its all pervading holiness and its basic usefulness in agriculture and commerce for than four millennia are too well known to need description. Its peculiar importance extends back to prehistoric times."

However incredible this may seem, there now seems to be good genetic and material evidence that sailors from India arrived in Australia from either Sindh or South India at the height of the ancient Indus civilization.

"Thus the main motifs of the seal tablets emphasize two cultural phenomena. The first is that there was a rich mythopetic basis for the use of these motifs. The second is that the main motifs emphasize pan-settlement relationships, i.e.

"Bone and ivory counters with circles and lines, carved in ways that do not correspond to dice, may have been used for predicting the future," writes Mark Kenoyer about these objects in Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (p.

"I stood on a mound of Mohenjo-daro in the Indus valley in the northwest of India," wrote Jawaharlal Nehru in The Discovery of India (1946), "and all around me lay the houses and streets of this ancient city that is said to have existed over five thousand years ago . . ."

"The discovery of a rich hoard of Harappan jewelry from the village of Mandi (29-26 degrees 10' North, 77 degrees 34-35'E) in Muzzaffarnagar district, western Uttar Pradesh, has surprised the archaeological world for several reasons. First, Mandi is located to the east of the Yamuna river, and this area has been considered peripheral to the main distribution area of the Harappan civilization."

"With the exception of First Street, the most impressive thoroughfare in the DK Area, Southern Portion," writes the early excavator of Mohenjo-daro, Ernest J.H. Mackay, "is unquestionably Low Lane which runs practically parallel with it.

S.K. Rao wrotes: "It is relevant to record here a local tradition regarding Lothal, which is considered a sacred place for Vanuvatimata, the sea-goddess who is represented by stones placed in a small enclosure of bricks built in the south-east corner of the mound."

In addition to hundreds of wells, Mohenjo-daro would have had hundreds of staircases. Many houses had stairs leading to upper courtyards of the building or to a second floor. This house in HR area had a double staircase that would allow people to enter and exit the upper courtyard in an orderly fashion. Some scholars feel this may have been a palace or a temple. Two doorways lead to a narrow courtyard at a lower level.

Asko Parpola writes: "Early Harappan cultures started moving toward the east and south in about 3000 BCE, and later waves of influence in these same directions came from the Indus civilization. That the Harappan water-buffalo cult had reached penninsular India by the late Harappan on Chalcolithic times is suggested by the large bronze sculpture of water buffalo discovered in 1974 in a hoard at Daimabad, the southernmost Indus site in Maharashtra.

These images that show how difficult if not impossible it is to ascertain Mohenjo-daro's age; the water table even 50 years ago was doing great damage to the city's remains and making deep digging impossible.

"Mackay found an extraordinary seal in his excavations at Chanhu-daro. It shows a short-horned bull, Bos gaurus, above a prostrate human figure. He thought that the scene depicted an attack by the bull, and the human on the ground was attempting a defense against the trampling animal."